Hitachi Ltd. and Toshiba Corp. may win 200 billion yen ($2.4 billion) of nuclear power plant orders from Tokyo Electric Power Co., a Hitachi official said.
The two Japanese companies, which make electronics goods as well as power equipment, have signed an engineering agreement with Tokyo Electric and aim to officially win the contracts by the end of March, Hitachi’s spokesman, Yuichi Izumisawa, said by telephone today. Hitachi will supply the reactor while Toshiba will provide the turbine and generator, the Nikkei newspaper reported, without saying how it got the information.
Tokyo Electric, Asia’s biggest power company, plans to spend 220 billion yen to build a 1,385-megawatt nuclear power reactor in the village of Higashi-Dori in northern Japan’s Aomori prefecture, it said in a filing to the Tokyo Stock Exchange in September. The project is part of Tokyo Electric’s 10-year plan to spend 2.5 trillion yen building and replacing atomic power, expanding renewable-energy use and developing efficient thermal-power projects to reduce green house emissions.
Tokyo Electric has asked Hitachi and Toshiba to provide estimated costs, said company spokesman, Daisuke Senda, without giving details.
Toshiba’s spokesman, Keisuke Ohmori, declined to comment when contacted by telephone.
Construction at the No.1 Higashi-Dori nuclear reactor started Jan. 25 and commercial operations are expected to begin by March 2017, Senda said.
Hitachi shares rose as much as 2.4 percent to 461 yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange while Toshiba climbed as much as 1.2 percent to 499 yen. Tokyo Electric shares fell as much as 0.6 percent to 2,016 yen.
